Chincoteague Island
I was one of those kids that was absolutely obsessed with horses. More than the average childhood obsession. I had horse wallpaper, an entire wall full of Breyer horses and horse books, posters, anything you could think of, except for an actual horse. Of course, I had the Misty of Chincoteague books.
We’re currently staying in Virginia Landing RV Campground, which is about an hour from the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. First, guess how many times we’ve been there. Nope, more than that. In the two weeks we’ve been here we’ve probably gone 6 or 7 times. Plus, one drive to the Maryland side of the park just to be complete.
To be fair, this campground is literally in the middle of nowhere, it’s a 20-minute drive each way to the nearest anything, which is a gas station. They have wine and snacks, which is good because the nearest grocer is another 10 minutes. Honestly, the place is so nice I don’t care; if I need a tomato for my salad I’m just going to go without.
Anyways, the point was that an hour’s drive isn’t a big deal around here. Unless you factor in gas prices, but I’m trying my very best to ignore that factor.
We’ve walked various trails several times, and at different parts of the day. From my experience, the best way to see the horses is from the water, regardless of the time. We took a kayak tour in the morning and were able to get as close as I’d want to get to wild horses. That afternoon we took a pontoon boat tour and saw a different herd of horses from a bit further away. We signed up for both tours as a package deal. Both were fun, my favorite was the kayak tour but I’m partial to kayaking.
Of course, horses aren’t the only wildlife in the park, they’re just the best and hardest to find. We also saw a few deer, a ton of rabbits that have really cool coats, and grey fox squirrels which I’d never heard of but are really cool looking.
In addition to taking a few hundred pictures of the same 20 or 30 horses, I was able to get some great salt marsh pictures that I’m going to play with and see if I can abstract a bit. It’s one of those situations where I know I want to do something with the photographs, but I don’t know what that may be yet. Works for me, the process of figuring it out is the fun part.